Mr. Jolly goes to Washington!

Alvarez battles for clarity: This morning, the New York Times tried to report yesterday’s House election.

Jolly beat Sink in Florida’s 13th district. At the Times, Lizette Alvarez found the district a little bit hard to define.

This is the way she started:

ALVAREZ (3/12/14): In a major victory for Republicans in the battle for control of Congress, David Jolly, a former lobbyist, narrowly won a special election for a House seat on Tuesday in a hotly contested swing district, giving the party an expensive triumph in its fight against President Obama’s health care plan.

The Republican won in a swing district. But hold on! By paragraph 5, the district seemed to be changing:

ALVAREZ: Even before the loss, Democrats were playing down a possible defeat, saying the mostly white, Republican-leaning district, packed with many older voters, was going to be a challenge for them.

Is that just what the Dems were saying? Or is that what the district actually is? In paragraph 6, we learned this:

ALVAREZ (continuing directly): It is the first time in more than 40 years that the congressional district will be overseen by someone other than Representative C. W. Bill Young, a Republican who died in October, setting off the scramble for the job. But for some voters, Mr. Jolly was the closest thing to Mr. Young—for years he served as one of Mr. Young’s senior aides and general counsel.

Did that make the district sound more Republican? In paragraph 12, we learned this:

ALCAREZ: The Gulf Coast district, always a centerpiece in national elections because of its many independent voters and a nearly equal number of Democrats and Republicans, is in Pinellas County, and it includes much of St. Petersburg.

The two parties seemed to be even again. But near the end, in paragraph 20, Alvarez once again said the district was “Republican-leaning.”

We’re describing the news report we found in our hard-copy Times. On-line, additional material has been added to make the district sound more Republican. On the other hand, that second “Republican-leaning” reference has been dropped.

Whether on-line or in our hard copy, Alvarez never reported the fact that Obama carried the district in 2012. At least, that’s what we’ve read from other sources, for example from Kevin Drum.

This morning, we were plenty confused by the time we left the coffee joint. That said, there’s an old saying in Times reporting:

District 13's 2012 Presidential vote is an outlier, since it voted Republican in the 2008, 2004, and 2000 Presidential elections . It has been gerrymandered 4 times since 1973, it hasn't elected a Democrat since 1981, and it voted the infamous Kathryn Harris to Congress twice. The Cook Partisan Voting Index lists it as R + 1 (Florida is listed at R + 2).

Alvarez probably confused the blogger in trying to equivocate District 13 into a swing state when historically is clearly not. District 13, although not a Republican stronghold, consistently votes Republican. Neither the blog nor the subject article provides adequate context as to significance of Jolly's razor-thin margin of victory, but at least, the blogger doesn't seem to reach that issue, while many in the national media are making this election out to be a canary in a coalmine for the Democrats' mid-term prospects.

This is confusing because there are three sources of information: (1) voting in the specific race, (2) voting in the presidential race, and (3) voter registrations. These are inconsistent with each other: (1) Republican, (2) Democrat, (3) Independent. The reporter should have explicitly clarified this but I think it makes sense that a district with independent voters might go for one party in one election and a candidate from another party in a different race.

Even before presenting his case, Somerby was playing down the accuracy of the article, saying the Times was trying to report on an election, but that he was confused. By the time you finish his post, you will be too.

"President Obama won a majority of the vote across the district in 2008 (51.9% of the vote) and again in 2012 (50.7%). In 2010, in a challenging election cycle for Democrats, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink received 51.1% of the vote in FL-13 despite losing statewide to Rick Scott. In 2006, Democratic Senator Bill Nelson won the district with 63.7% of vote, compared to the 61.3% he received statewide.

As a bone-gnawing exercise

"Alvarez never reported the fact that Obama carried the district in 2012"

without mentioning the narrowness of the victory is pretty low even for the blogger.

The article was one long exercise in "See how smart I am and how dumb everyone else is" that ended up proving the opposite.

How is this monumentally futile, baleful creature able to go on from day to day?

I've asked this question of commenters, and from the same nasty response JS-1/2 got, of the same person. And the reply is the same: no one is denying either your right to comment or your right to keep your reasons to yourself. But only fools spend time and energy on things they find worthless. So expect folks to point out occasionally that you're a fool. It's not like anyone has a subpoena.

Do you have an objection to the point raised by 4:18? It seems to indicate the blogger is woefully ignorant of the way turnout favor Republicans in special elections, indicating Mr. Somerby might be easily confused about electoral politics. Otherwise it seems he would rather pretend he is to make a stupid point about the reporter, none of whose facts highlighted by Somerby is wrong.

Second question. Do you ever write comments adding to a discussion. Almost all I have seen are critical of those raising disagreements with Somerby. If you have nothing to add except criticicism of critics, why read the comment section?

Considering that a Bob fan once thought that Bob's 1,000 to 2,000 or so "unique hits" per day was actually a high volume of traffic for a national blog that's been around 16 years, let me assure them both that Somerby is quite thankful for anyone, fans or trolls, who still spends time on this blog.

@6:20: Somerby is complaining about the way facts were explained to readers. I think it is likely he understood it himself, as did many of the readers commenting here. The job of a journalist is to be clear and to write so that those with less technical knowledge will understand, not use conflicting descriptors that will confuse people unnecessarily.

There are plenty of things that I am occasionally curious about but which are none of my business. I don't worry about them, but sometimes I ask about them. Since I realize I have no right to have answers, I also realize that I may have to settle for a "no comment. And I don't worry about that either.

I have no idea what TDH is thankful for. My guess would be that whatever "a Bob fan" once thought about "unique hits" provides no consideration to determine the bloggers state of mind. And if you do, then you're as big a fool as Anonymous @4:18P.

You can stop pretending to know what I'm pretending any time now. My question isn't serious even by blog standards. It was just idle curiosity.

Nothing Anonymous @4:18 wrote was worth "addressing." TDH claimed that Alvarez should have mentioned that Obama carried the district, and @4:18P fumed that TDH didn't in turn mention the narrowness of Obama's victory. Is @4:18P angry because he thinks TDH requires that Alvarez mention Obama's victory without the margin? Perhaps Alvarez should have mentioned both facts. Is @4:18P angry because he thinks TDH is writing a blog entry about the special election itself instead of an entry about the supposedly-bad reporting on said election?

Anonymous @4:18P has read TDH's mind to find out how smart TDH thinks he himself is. Of course, that's just foolishness. TDH either makes a fair point or he doesn't.

In a world filled with the vile, Anonymous @4:18P finds TDH a "baleful creature." And that's foolishness too.

But it's clear Anonymous @4:18P is a fool: he spends his time and energy on the "monumentally futile."

Also, if you don't agree that Somerby's wee blog work is the worse problem as compared to shitty reporting, it's simply because you worship him as your do-no-wrong idol, unlike us, the free-thinkers of the world.

Was anything in it inaccurate? In fact, the only "salient point" of criticism BOB can muster is that the reporter "did not elucidate" the results on the 2012 presidential election. She also left out the result of the 2012 Congressional race, which was handily won by the Republican incumbent. That was an equally "salient point" but one BOB overlooked.

Perhaps you wish us to stroll down memory lane and refresh you on BOB's history with the reporter?

Why would they do any better. There is not a single factual error Mr. Somerby has pointed to in the Timnes article. He is confusion is the same on this topic, elections, as he has demonstrated with physics. He lacks basic understanding so it is hard for him to know how to deal with anything as complex as an out of cycle election in a swing district.

Wrong. Somerby would not be able to write an article complaining about this article if he didn't first understand the problem with it. Journalists should be clear. That is their job. Being factually correct is just the starting place -- facts need to be clearly expressed.

Folks in Tampa-St. Pete perhaps already understand political realities. Those reading the NY Times are not local but they have been hearing that this is a voter referendum on Obamacare's rollout, a precursor of the 2014 midterms, etc. So there has been national attention focused and that makes the NY Times versions pertinent.

I see that the on-line version of the article mentioned that the Libertarian candidate got 5% of the vote. Presumably most of that vote would have gone Republican in a two candidate race. That makes the result 53.4% to 46.5% -- a very solid victory for a weak candidate who was outspent by a well-known Democrat. I think this result does carry over state lines, because Obamacare has been a national SNAFU. Every Republican in the country can run against it.

Someone who has been the right-hand to the incumbent (as described in the article) is not exactly unknown. Further, I heard Sink badmouthing Obamacare herself in an interview so it hardly seems like a referendum on Obamacare when neither candidate was supportive of it.

Did you also add the socialist, green, and other leftist candidate votes into Sink's total? Maybe some of the Libertarians would have gone for the Democrat -- she didn't strike me as being very Liberal and not all Libertarians feel at home with all stripes of Republican.